


I Am the Ground

by zjofierose



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Badass Katsuki Mari, F/M, Fate, Fate & Destiny, Getting Together, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Red String of Fate, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26119834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: We are bound together.I am the ground,you are the step.~Rumi
Relationships: Nishigori Takeshi/Nishigori Yuuko
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuri!!! On Ice Soulmates Week 2020





	I Am the Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I know exactly fuck-all about the Japanese schooling system, and only very slightly more about Nagoya. Please, please, do not expect accuracy about either of those things from this fic.

Yuuko is newly eighteen when she fucks right off to Nagoya on her own, suitcases and book bag packed into Mari’s car. Her parents don’t approve, but they do wish her well. The Katsukis are as cheerful and inscrutable as always, save for Yuuri, who is openly sad, but then he always has worn his heart on his sleeve. 

Takeshi, she thinks, is still in shock, but she viciously, gleefully, doesn’t care. 

“Look,” she’d said to him the night she’d told him she was leaving, “I don’t care what kind of string ties us together, red, white, purple, whatever! You have always taken this for granted - you have always taken  _ me _ for granted - and I’m done with it. I’m moving to the city, and I’m going to live my life.”

She slams the car door, and Mari peels out, a cigarette already hanging from her lip. The last glimpse Yuuko catches of Takeshi is in the rearview mirror, looking smaller than she’s ever seen him.

\--

Her apartment is tiny and bare, but she fills it with plants and postcards and the autumn light shines in during the afternoons. She starts classes a week after Yuuri and Takeshi start back to Hasetsu high school. It’s strange to be without them, but Yuuri texts her daily and Takeshi… well, it’s awkward.

It’s not done, what she did, at least not in Hasetsu; maybe in the big cities, maybe in movies or soap operas, but since the moment Takeshi was born and the red string connecting them appeared on Yuuko’s finger, it’s been expected that they will grow up, settle down, and live happily ever after, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And it’s not actually that Yuuko doesn’t want that? She loves Takeshi, in her own way, always has, figures she probably always will, it’s just…

It’s just that it’s confining. She’s a year older, more than a year more mature (if she does say so herself), and maybe she’s not going to be a professional skater like Yuuri-kun, maybe she’s not going to tour the world like Minako-sensei, maybe she’s going to end up more like Hiroko-san, with a family and a job close to home, but before then she wants to… she wants to do  _ something _ .

Takeshi, when she tells him this, doesn’t understand. 

“But you have a good job at the Ice Castle, and there’s the college in Fukuoka,” he says, “what do you want with Nagoya? There’s nothing there for a girl like you.”

Yuuko gapes at him. “A girl like me,” she says flatly, “what is  _ a girl like me _ ?”

Takeshi shrugs. He’s clearly uncomfortable; knows that she’s upset, but not the why of it. He pushes on anyway, blundering his way forward like he always does, and she feels the irritation rising in her as he opens his mouth. 

“A good, small-town girl,” he says, “someone who already knows who their soulmate is, who already knows what they’ll do, where they’ll live.” He shrugs again. “I don’t know what you think you’ll find there. Everything you want is here.”

“And what do  _ you _ know, Nishigori Takeshi, of what  _ I _ want?” she spits. It’s a low blow; they’ve fooled around a bit with limited success, Takeshi high on knowledge of What Girls Like from his gym buddies, Yuuko resoundingly underwhelmed. 

He lifts his chin, the mulish look on his face that pushes all of her buttons. It’s cute when Yuuri gets determined; it’s annoying when Takeshi does. The difference, she supposes, is that Yuuri never thinks he’ll succeed, where Takeshi always assumes he will. 

“If you think,” Yuuko cuts him off as his mouth opens, “that I should want to be here so much,” she folds her arms and stares him down, “then you will have to show me why.”

He exhales hard, jaw clenching, and nods once. “Fine,” he says, “I will.”

\--

“You need to talk to him,” Minako tells Yuuko when she comes up to Nagoya to visit one weekend in October. 

Yuuko frowns at the cup of matcha in front of her. “Why?” she asks, uncaring if she sounds a little petulant.

“He’s your soulmate,” Minako says, as if that settles it.

“So?” Yuuko fiddles with the edge of her cup. “I never asked for him to be.”

Minako sighs, and reaches over to flick Yuuko on the ear, hard. “None of us ask for our soulmates, but we’re stuck with them. If you don’t love him, you need to tell him that, not string him along like this.”

“I’m not stringing him along,” Yuuko grumbles, folding her arms. “It’s not my fault he’s a deadbeat seventeen year old.”

“He’s in high school,” Minako’s voice is exasperated, “what do you want from him?”

“I want to feel like he cares about  _ me _ !” Yuuko bursts out, thumping at her chest as her eyes well with frustration, “I want to feel like he’s someone I would choose to build a life with even if we didn’t have this stupid string connecting us! I want to feel like…” she pauses, trying to put it into words. “I want to feel like it doesn’t matter that we’re soulmates, because we’re in  _ love _ .”

Minako looks as sympathetic as she ever does, which is to say, not very. Still, Yuuko takes it for what it is. 

“ _ Talk to him _ ,” Minako says again, then slurps down the last of her coffee.

\---

Takeshi sends her his fall schedule. He’s replaced two electives with community college classes, one in hospitality and one in business accounting. The hospitality class is a night course, which she knows means he’s missing at least one after-school sports practice a week.

_ Huh _ , she thinks, and archives the email.

\---

Mari comes up to see her in the end of November. It would be Yuuri’s birthday, but he’s off at a competition, so everyone will be celebrating when he gets back with the usual katsudon and cake. Yuuko tries not to think about it being the first of Yuuri’s birthday’s that she’ll have missed since they were toddlers. 

They get drunk on sweet sake and lie on the floor of Yuuko’s tiny apartment laughing and gossiping and eating too much fried food. Mari cooks like her mother, though she’ll never admit to it, and Yuuko allows herself to indulge. Classes have been harder than she expected, and it’s lonely here in Nagoya.

“What do you miss?” Mari asks from somewhere to the right of her on the floor.

Yuuko hums. “I miss the ocean.” 

“There’s ocean here,” Mari laughs, “we went down and saw it today.”

“I knowww,” Yuuko whines, reaching for her sake cup, “but it’s not the same. It’s all developed here. There’s no space.”

Mari rolls over, leaning up on one elbow to look at her. “What else?”

“I miss you and Yuuri.”

“Aw,” Mari laughs, reaching out to punch Yuuko lightly in the arm. “We miss you, too, Yu-chan.”

Yuuko pouts. “What did you miss when you were gone?” she asks, rolling over onto her own elbow just as Mari deflates back down to lie on the floor. 

“Mmph,” Mari waves a hand. “I only went to Fukuoka, it’s not the same as this,” she says. “I went home every weekend, nearly, and I was too busy the rest of the time. I didn’t have a chance to miss much."

Yuuko remembers it, how strung out Mari would look at the end of each semester, smoking cigarette after cigarette, thin fingers pushed against the pages of a textbook. She doesn’t talk about her degree, but Yuuko knows it hangs in the office of Yu-topia Katsuki; Katsuki Mari, BA with honors. 

“Do you miss Nishigori?” Mari asks, and Yuuko chokes on her sip of sake. 

She thinks about it as she clears her throat, waiting until she’s wiped her mouth and nose before answering. 

“I don’t know,” she says eventually, “I guess? He was always just… there, you know?”

“Yeah. You three were inseparable from the time you were babies,” Mari says, her voice fond.

“I wish…” Yuuko starts, then pauses. “I wish I were like you and Yuuri, where I didn’t know who my soulmate was. That I had something to look forward to, someone new to meet who would sweep me off my feet.”

“But what if you never met them?” Mari sits up, face serious. “What if, when you met them, you were old? Or maybe,” she hiccups, takes another drink of sake. “Maybe you’d meet them, and you’d hate them, and still be stuck together. You don’t hate Nishigori.”

Now it’s Yuuko’s turn to sigh. “No,” she agrees, “I don’t hate him.”

Mari wags a finger at her. “Your idiot has changed,” she says knowingly, and Yuuko blinks. “He’s got a job now, and hasn’t gotten in trouble for anything all fall.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Yuuko laughs. “He’s always getting in trouble for something.”

“I don’t know,” Mari purses her lips thoughtfully. “I think he’s trying.”

Yuuko blows a raspberry and holds out her cup. “Stop talking about boys and pour me more sake, Mari-nee.”

\--

The holidays are awkward. Yuuko is more relieved to be home than she expected, and she doesn’t know how she feels about that. She loves her little space in Nagoya, but she doesn’t love the never-ending surge of the city around her, the traffic and the people and the crashing ocean. It’s colder there, and windier than Hasetsu, and there’s no one to remind her not to miss a meal, no one to talk to while she does her homework. She’s made a few casual friends from among her classmates, but no one she really clicks with, no one who really knows her. 

She spends time with Mari, and with Yuuri, and with her family, eating and laughing and talking about school and the city. She goes to all her favorite shops, and eats all of her favorite food, and even if it still chafes that everyone in Hasetsu is in everyone else’s business, and even if she still doesn’t like that everyone in town both knows her and also doesn’t know her at all, it’s still… it’s still  _ home _ , she thinks, and that means more than she had expected. 

She assumes at first that Takeshi will turn up and haunt her like he always does, but in fact there’s little sign of him. She’s almost miffed until her mother mentions that he’d picked up extra shifts over the holidays, since the Ice Castle is paying overtime for all the holiday parties. It’s… odd, Yuuko thinks, her mind flashing back to what Mari had said a month prior- the Takeshi she’d known before would have been everywhere underfoot, laughing with his friends and causing light mayhem wherever he went, and his absence feels strange.

He calls her the last weekend she’s home, asking if she’ll come out with him that Saturday, and she agrees before she can think about it too much. They’ve texted casually since she’s been gone, much like they always did, but it’s been different without seeing him every day. He’s a talker in person, but not over text, and it had been nice to get some space, but when she answers the phone and hears his voice for the first time in months, the sound of it catches her off guard.

She’s under-dressed when he shows up, and has to go change. They’ve never gone on a proper date before, and she’d been wearing her usual jeans and sweater, but then he turns up in slacks and a well-fitted button-down, and Yuuko has to make excuses about not being ready in order to dash upstairs and hastily throw on a dress. 

It’s… nice, Yuuko realizes halfway through dinner. Takeshi is polite, taking her arm, holding the door, letting her order first. After dinner they walk through the town and he wraps his scarf around her neck when he notices her shiver. They talk about their classes, about how Yuuri’s doing in his competitions, about whether Minako has met her soulmate and just doesn’t like them, or if she’s waiting for them to find her. He’s better dressed than she’s ever seen him outside of a wedding, but still has his sharp wit and wicked tongue, and when they walk over the bridge, she lets him take her hand. 

She doesn’t know what she expects when they reach her house, but it’s definitely not for him to kiss her knuckles, give her a wink, and then saunter off whistling. 

\--

February is hard. The holidays are a month behind her, and Nagoya is cold and lonely. Her schoolwork is hard, and probably she signed up for one too many classes this semester, but Yuuko has never been someone to admit defeat gracefully. Instead, she drinks too much coffee with too much sugar in it, vibrating her way through sleepless nights and long classes.

Part of the problem, she thinks, is that she still hasn’t made any friends. Her room is a studio, with its own kitchenette and bathroom, so she rarely interacts with anyone on her floor. Mari is busy with the usual snowbird influx to the onsen and so doesn’t have time to talk on the phone or text much. Yuuri is busy with preparing for his spring competitions. Her parents are busy first with her older brother’s upcoming wedding, and then with urgent repairs of the Ice Castle when the winter storms make it clear exactly how long the building has been going season to season without any major overhauls. 

It’s not that none of them respond; they do, of course they do. It’s just there’s a lag, on both ends: Yuuko messages when she remembers to, and then they call when she’s in class, and then she messages back while studying late at night, and doesn’t receive a reply until the next day, and…

She stares at her phone for a long time, then messages Takeshi.

The response is immediate.

\--

She goes home in March, and tells herself it’s because she has a long weekend, and not because it’s Takeshi’s eighteenth birthday.

She comes to his birthday party; it’d be weird if she didn’t, she  _ is _ his soulmate after all. And besides, Yuuri and Mari are both there, and several of their other friends, and all of Takeshi’s family, including his twin, whom she’s known since she was born. Of course she goes.

It’s a loud party, and Takeshi is larger than life, surrounded by his equally huge brothers and toasting to his newfound adulthood. She has a little more to drink than she intends, and kisses him on the cheek in front of everyone, face flaming as she catches the scent of his cologne. His arm around her waist is strong and steadying, and he presses his cheek to the top of her head before he lets her go.

He takes her out the next night, not as fancy this time which is a bit of a relief if she’s honest. She has a good time; she has a _really_ good time. The food is tasty, the beer is cold, and they talk like she’s not sure they ever have before, at least in person. He tells her about working with Yuuri on researching colleges and coaches, talks about the new college credit classes he’s taking this semester. Researching skating topics with Yuuri has made Takeshi interested in physical therapy, and he’s doing an intro class to go along with an accounting class this time. It’s… surprising, if Yuuko’s honest. She’s never known him to be so interested in something that’s not a contact sport or pranks, but the interest seems genuine. 

It’s a future she can picture suddenly: Takeshi with a degree in physical therapy, her own finished sports medicine certification. They could work with Yuuri as he rises through the ranks, and then with other skaters once he inevitably retires. Maybe they’d be based in Hasetsu at the Ice Castle, or maybe they’d move to a bigger city, or…

It takes her breath away with the suddenness of it, and she looks at the red thread that stretches across the table between their hands and for the first time in years it doesn’t feel like a tether. 

They go for a walk afterward, through the small winding streets down to the ocean. The moon is big and the wind is chilly, but Takeshi wraps an arm around her, and his bulk is warm and steady at her side. It’s nice, Yuuko thinks, and tries not to put too much weight onto it. 

\--

He sends her a picture sometime in mid-April of a small house and a question mark. She looks it over. It’s one she recognizes; not far from the Ice Castle, a few blocks from the water. It’s a modest part of town, but nice enough - convenient to the shops and the train station and the schools. 

“I like it,” she sends back, “whose is it?”

“My great-uncle’s”, he messages. “Ryuichi and I are going to fix it up.”

“That’s nice,” she tells him, and doesn’t think more of it. It’s the sort of thing Takeshi and his brothers often do - projects for the extended family, manual labor since there are several of them and they’re all so big and active. She knows Katsuki Toshiya’s had them over to help with repairs at the onsen more than once. It makes sense that they’d take this on, too. 

The house is nice enough, she thinks later, looking at the picture again. It could use some updating, a nice coat of paint. A refresher for the garden out front, maybe. 

She puts it away and goes back to her homework.

\--

“What are you going to do?” Yuuri asks her over a video call with all the guilelessness of the sixteen year old savant he is. He took gold at Junior Worlds and is cramming to finish all of his schoolwork for the semester. He still has one more year to finish before he can go to college, and his teachers make allowances for his travel to and from competitions, but it’s a tough juggling act regardless.

“Do about what?” Yuuko asks, finishing an exercise in the workbook in front of her. 

“About Nishigori,” Yuuri answers, and Yuuko looks up and frowns.

“What do you mean ‘ _ do about Nishigori _ ?” Her voice is slightly sharper than she intends, but she’s been trying not to think about how messaging him is now the last thing she does before she goes to sleep and the first thing she does when she wakes up. It feels uncomfortable - an unintentional slip she didn’t see coming. 

Yuuri rolls his eyes at her. “I mean, he’s graduating. Are you going to come back? Is he going to move to Nagoya? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Yuuko scratches her pencil across the paper with alacrity, her notes tiny and perfect like the font of a printer. “We haven’t talked about it.”

“ _ Yuu-chan _ ,” Yuuri groans, “he’s your  _ soulmate _ . You have to talk to him.”

“Don’t you  _ Yuu-chan _ me, Katsuki Yuuri,” she snaps, suddenly irritated. “I am busy living my life, and it is not my concern what Nishigori Takeshi does or doesn’t do with himself after he graduates.”

Yuuri blinks at her in obvious surprise, then nods, slowly. “ _ Hai _ ,” he says, “my apologies, Yuuko.”

Yuuko huffs, turning back to her homework. “Tell me what your next assignment is,” she says, and listens as he shuffles through the papers on the desk in front of him to find it.

\--

Takeshi and Ryuichi graduate in May, beaming white smiles and fresh-pressed suits. 

Yuuko is there, of course - so are both their families, and the Katsukis, and the entire rest of the town. She sits with Yuuri and Mari in the stands and cheers as they cross the stage to get their diplomas. 

She catches up with him afterward, his big hand waving as a gaggle of classmates (mostly girls, Yuuko notices with disapproval) make their farewells to the twins. Takeshi’s smile is huge and he pulls her into a hug, lifting her off her feet as she squeaks in surprise. 

He sets her down gently and presses a kiss to her mouth before she even realizes what’s happening, his lips warm and firm against her own as Ryuichi whistles behind them. Her cheeks are flaming when he lets her go, and it’s all she can do to not press her hand to her mouth in shock.

\--

The afterparty is enormous, and involves probably all of the graduating class at some point or another. Yuuri’s drunk, Mari’s drunk, Takeshi’s drunk - they’re all well past tipsy and dancing with abandon, and it’s warm and dark on the beach, and it’s warmer and darker in the little changing cabin they find, and she can feel the buzz of alcohol in her veins making her giggly and light, but she’s very much aware of what she’s saying when she says  _ yes _ , and then when she says it again, and again.

Turns out books aren’t the only thing Takeshi’s been studying, and she does not need to know where he’s been doing his research, but Yuuko decides to pass him with flying colors.

\--

She stays in Nagoya for June and July, taking a set of summer courses, but her heart’s not in it. She puts in for a transfer to Fukuoka and packs her boxes, pulling the postcards off of her walls and settling her potted plants into Mari’s hatchback for the drive back. She’s grateful for the ride, but grateful also that it’s warm enough to keep the windows down, because the smell of Mari’s cigarettes are turning her stomach.

She is not looking forward to moving back in with her parents, but it’s the only plan she has, and so she’s confused when Mari pulls up in front of a small house in a different neighborhood than her own. It’s familiar, even freshly painted in a different color, the window boxes full of late summer flowers.

“What--” she starts, and then Mari unbuckles her belt and practically pushes her out the car door. 

Yuuko stumbles, but stands up, and when she turns back around to look at the house again, Takeshi is in front of her, down on one knee. Her heart thumps, hard.

“What,” she says again, and she’s never seen him look nervous like this, not in their entire lives, but his face is a study in determined anxiety and his hands are shaking minutely. 

“Tohata Yuuko,” he starts, and holds out a hand. His palm is large, and sitting in it are two small objects: a ring and a key. “Would you-”

“Oh, thank  _ god _ ,” Yuuko interrupts, flinging her arms around his neck. To his credit, he manages to close his fist in time to prevent either the ring or the key from falling to the pavement. “I’m pregnant.”

Takeshi stares. Blinks. And then his whole face dissolves into laughter as his arms come up around her, firm and strong and welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love, uwu. Plz love me!
> 
> Come scream about YoI on discord! https://discord.gg/TYMxcAB


End file.
